Man in the making

A. Yes. The known his­tory of man reveals that there is no dif­fer­ence in the con­struc­tion of human form ever since human life com­menced on this earth planet.

Q. In 'Man know Thy­self!', did you mean we must know our­selves in just this life, or all our past lives?

A. Know thy­self is the most ancient aphor­ism. We have its equiv­a­lents in the greek and latin phrases gno­thi seau­ton and nosce te ipsum, and all that these words con­note is the actu­ally real­ized expe­ri­ence within of the life impulse apart from mere the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge, whereby we live and all other crea­tures live and the whole uni­verse in being sus­tained; for it is by know­ing this that all else becomes known and noth­ing else remains to be known. Self-real­i­za­tion is a step­ping stone to God-real­i­za­tion. He who has found him­self, can never again lose any­thing in this world.

Q. Is the nature and extent of our spir­i­tual growth or advance­ment beyond the tenth door deter­mined by our past lives?

A. Yes – in a way it is deter­mined. A man is in the mak­ing. One who has passed pri­mary class will get admis­sion in the next higher grade. One who has just been put on the way will take his or her own time. How­ever, there is no hard and fast rule about it. The one who has been put on the way pro­gresses more by reg­u­lar devo­tion of time to med­i­ta­tions with full faith than one with a dif­fer­ent back­ground who is not reg­u­lar in his med­i­ta­tions.